This invention relates to rearranging digital information with the use of a computer. In one aspect, the invention relates to rearranging sections of a music soundfile.
Many applications, such as multimedia, or radio and television advertisements, require set-length audio tracks to be produced. The usual method of doing this uses analog equipment. Audio tape is physically sliced with razor blades and reassembled to the desired length or recombined in a different order. Obviously, this technique is very labor-intensive and time-consuming. It also requires a high level of aural training. A technique which eliminates the need for musical skills in the sound editing process would be very desirable.
Each rearrangement of a musical composition using the prior art techniques as above required investments of time and training. A technique to cut down on the time and training required to produce rearrangements is needed.
The production of alternative versions of a rearrangement is often impractical using the prior art techniques because of time and expense constraints. While other computer music editing programs allow the user to manipulate digitally sampled audio data, the user must still make decisions about where edit points will be and in what order to rearrange the resulting pieces. The user must ensure that the final product comes as close as possible to the desired length. A technique to automatically generate new versions of a rearrangement having different musical characteristics and/or length would be very desirable.